"Graham stated: “Everybody who loves Christ or knows Christ, whether they are conscious of it or not, are members of the Body of Christ. They may not even know the name of Jesus, but they know in their heart that they need something ... and they turn to the only light that they have and I think that they are saved and ... they are going to be with us in heaven.”

Sounds like Rev. Billy G. is embracing a mixture of the RCC's teaching of prevenient grace, invincible ignorance and divine salvific will. That's quiet an evolvement for him, considering his roots in backwoods Southern Baptist tradition.

A plain reading of scripture says that God judges, God punishes, and yes there is a Hell.

But is Hell forever, eternal? What do those words mean exactly? No one knows.

The Bible also says God loves us all and wants only to be with is in heaven.

So really, no one knows and that's that. You can interpret the bible a million different ways. You can apply logic, reason, history and science and you will not arrive at a conclusion you can live with.

My thoughts -- good people of other religions don't go to Hell (if Hell exists). My God would not send a 14 year old girl who does of AIDS to Hell.

But could there still be a Hell where some go for at least a while? Why not? There are some pretty horrible people in the world who seem to die without making any amends.

I found the most intelligible vision of hell, and purgatory, to be what C.S. Lewis (who also died 50 years ago today) wrote in The Great Divorce. He described a place that's purgatory if you leave, hell if you stay. Those who stay become, by the very nature of their choice, increasingly unhinged.

If God is what it Ultimately Real, and God is good, then all choices that take us away from what is good also distance us from what is real, and that's the very definition of psychosis. M. Scott Peck described those who so choose as "people of the lie."

So you can count me as one of those who believes that judgment is self-inflicted, chosen. I'm not a universalist because I don't think all people choose the Real.

I think that when we sit or stand in church and read the creeds, say the litugy, prayers, and everything else that we have all sorts of movements of pure faith within us. But I do think that even as we say these things, many people believe other things. And many people claim to hold certain doctrinal views just for political reasons while believing (or not believing) certain things.

I am guilty of keeping quiet when it comes to some issues of controvery in the church. Keeping quiet is an easy route. My friend who belongs to another parish told me that he made his views clear at a parish council meeting and illicited all sorts of aggressive responses for and against.